Frohes Neues Jahr aus Kln

Happy New Year from Cologne! You said you were going to visit our city soon, hope you have managed already or at least will do it in the near future.

Would appreciate your time and tolerance in answering the following:

At my workplace, on the aircraft as a flight attendant, I had a deep cut and a colleague helped me by taking out of the medical kit the hansaplast plasters and applying one on my wound whilst I was holding my finger. That was ofcourse very kind of him but my worry is that he did not use a glove and if he had a cut himself or blood on his finger when touching the plaster which he then applied on my wound would that pose HIV transmiison risk? I know all this is 'what-if' and theoretical but in our job unnoticed cuts happen often and I would appreciate an answer based on the assumption that he had HIV blood from his finger on the plaster, when oepning it for me, which he then applied on my wound.

Many thanks in advance for your replies and thank you for the kind letter received from your foundation about my donation. Glad to be of help and will always do so.

Response from Dr. Frascino

Hi,

The theoretical risk would be fresh HIV-tainted blood coming into contact with your open wound. This would be an extremely remote possibility. If you're worried, you could get an HIV-antibody test at the three-month mark. I'm confident the result would be negative.

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